Friday night was a reminder game, with the back-to-back champion Las Vegas Aces, despite a No. 4 seed and an 0-2 hole, reminding the WNBA world that taking them down will be quite the task. Will they do it again, winning a 13th-straight home playoff game to force a Game 5? Or, can the No. 1-seed New York Liberty show that, as the season’s best team, they’re ready to take down the title-holding titans on the road?
The next chapter of Liberty-Aces tips off at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Oct. 6 (ABC).
What’s the Liberty’s Sab strategy?
In Game 3, the Aces’ top defensive priority was obvious: shut down Sabrina Ionescu. Vegas certainly succeeded in doing so, preventing the fifth-year guard from getting off, much less sinking, her 3-point espresso shots that have proved powerful sources of positive momentum for the Liberty throughout the postseason. Ionescu managed just seven total shot attempts, and only two 3-point attempts, as she mostly was relegated to bystander status on the offensive end because of the Aces’ aggressive blitzes.
New York, however, also employs the top assisting point guard in WNBA postseason history in Courtney Vandersloot. Albeit still limited to 20 minutes of playing time in Game 3, Sloot had her highest usage game of the postseason, totaling her…
